April 2007

Making (Learning) Games for Change

In the News has featured several articles about the Serious Games movement, most recently in February when we took a look at " Climate Challenge," the BBC's global warming game. This month, we explore another game about global warming, "Melting Point," only this time it's from the inside.

Kent Quirk is the creator of "Melting Point," and he’s a 25-year veteran of the game industry. We recently heard Kent speak about building his game at the Boston Games Salon, an event sponsored by the Boston branch of Games for Change (and hosted by Gary Goldberger from LG2G project partner FableVision). Games for Change is an international nonprofit that supports the development and creation of digital games for social change. The fact that it exists and is thriving seems a clear sign of just how all-pervasive (and in fact, useful) digital games have become in our culture.

"Melting Point," it turns out, is both a "game for change" and a learning game. It’s also very much a game in progress (and you can follow that progress at Kent’s website). "Melting Point" is also a labor of love - or better yet, a labor of commitment - for its creator. "My wife got sick of hearing me talk about global warming issues," Kent said. "And finally, I had to do something about it." Kent is funding the development of the game through his company Cognitoy, but is also seeking partners for the project. That work, he said, has become somewhat easier since the success of the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," which Kent noted "has turned up the whole discussion of global warming."

So what are Kent's goals for his game? "I want to try and give people the chance to do a simulation around global warming," he said. "What can people do to have a positive impact on our climate? I don't know all of the answers, but I do know that there are some big levers that need to get moved. And I want people to get a feeling of how big those levers are." Kent is targeting the game toward a broad audience of adults, with the intention of making "Melting Point" a casual game that can be played and enjoyed even by people who aren’t avid gamers. Said Kent, "I'd love people like my mother to play this game and to get something out of it. It shouldn't be an impossible challenge for them."

Kent has done a tremendous amount of research on the science of global warming, probably enough to fill a book. So why's he making a game? "A good simulation is one of the best labs for learning," he said. "A simulation that’s well executed can give you the chance to understand a really complicated landscape of decisions. It's a great way to get to the gestalt of a system."  So in "Melting Point," players will use real-world information about economics, politics and global warming to try and improve the Earth's climate in the world of the game.

One factor that Kent hopes will keep people playing "Melting Point" is what he calls the "pleasurable frustration" of game play. "Good game play uses a stair step of learning," he said. "A game teaches you a skill. You master the skill and solve a problem. Eventually you get to a new problem that can't be solved with the old skill. So you're motivated to learn a new skill." This process, Kent feels, will engage players in "Melting Point" in a way that they might never be engaged by a book or article on global warming.

Another important part of any good game, of course, is fun. And Kent is aware that "Melting Point" won't succeed if playing the game feels anything like taking medicine. "I want people to learn something," he said. "But I want them to have fun while they're doing it." At one point in the development of "Melting Point," Kent felt that his game was lacking that fun. It included lots of useful information, probably "too much," he said, but not enough good game play. Kent is now working to develop more game elements that will keep players engaged while they learn.

In the end, Kent said, he hopes he "can have an impact on what people think about the problem of global warming." And in that statement, he helped to sum up the very idea of a serious game. A serious game, whether it's about global warming, economics or even pre-Algebra math, offers game play that helps players learn something they can then apply in the real world. And even though it’s serious, it's fun, too.

We look forward to playing the finished version of Kent Quirk's "Melting Point" in the not-too-distant future.

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